Doc: Dusty Baker's health a concern

Speier: 'Any time you're where the buck stops, it's stressful'

Sep. 25, 2012

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The Reds said Dusty Baker might return to the dugout as soon as the team's series in St. Louis Oct. 1-3. / The Enquirer/Liz Dufour

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Apparently it wasn’t uncommon, what happened to Dusty Baker Friday, on his way out of a Chicago hospital. We say “apparently’’, because there is nothing common about suffering a slight stroke moments after you’ve been given a clean bill of health.

Baker had been admitted two days earlier, with an irregular heartbeat, a condition he has had for years. Small strokes are a familiar and ugly side effect in cases like Baker’s.

The Reds manager was lucky to the extent that the “stroke team’’ at Northwestern Memorial was on the job quickly enough to minimize any damage. On Tuesday, Baker met at the ballpark with Bob Castellini, Walt Jocketty and his doctors, then told his players he might see them next week in St. Louis.

Everyone says Baker is fine and looks great. Diuretics rid him of 10 or 12 pounds of water weight, a result of the irregular heartbeat, so “he looks like he went to Jenny Craig’’ in the words of Bronson Arroyo.

And yet, we fear a little for Dusty Baker.

Even if the condition is treatable and under control.

It’s the job. The stress of managing a major league baseball team isn’t good for anyone’s heart. “You play every day. You have to answer to things every day,’’ said Milwaukee manager Ron Roenicke. “It’s a stressful job.’’

Maybe stress had nothing to do with what felled Baker. It doesn’t seem to have been a big reason. But the man has a slightly faulty ticker, and he’s about to enter the most heart-wrenching part of the year.

The Reds have had a lot of cool subplots and backstories this summer, Todd Frazier to Aroldis Chapman, with a best-supporting-actor nomination for Ryan Ludwick. This isn’t one of those stories.

Baker is the picture of cool. That’s the irony, as real as the little slices of Australian timber he chews on during games. Dusty Baker has incense and an iPod in his office. A picture of the late, great blues guitarist, John Lee Hooker, hangs from a wall. When he was a kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, his mother bought him tickets to the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, for his 18th birthday.

His interests are as diverse as his clubhouse. Music, wine, holistic healing. He might be a baseball lifer. But baseball isn’t his life. At first, cursory glance, Dusty Baker would seem the least likely major league manager to have big job worries.

As Roenicke said, “He’s been (managing) a long time. He’s got the temperament for it. Players have fun playing for him.’’ Roenicke has known Baker since each played in the majors. The Brewers manager called Baker a mentor. “It’s certainly not as stressful (for Baker) as for some other people,’’ Roenicke said.

But as Roenicke noted, running a baseball show is different. It might be the hardest job in sport. It’s harder than being a football coach. If you are a football coach, you take six classes and one exam a week. If you are a baseball manager, you take six exams and one class. No sport demands the full-focus daily grind of baseball.

As a terminally suffering Pirates fan, I spent more than a few nights this summer sitting in the garage, in the car with the satellite radio. I agonized over every pitch and pitching change. I second-guessed Pirates manager Clint Hurdle third and fourth times. Why is Gaby Sanchez playing? He couldn’t hit my Wiffle curvel.

I got a little bent about it. Especially in the last six weeks, when my Buccos couldn’t beat the kids from The Sandlot. Every night was a hook to the spleen.

Baker internalizes. He’s sensitive to criticism, but rarely vents. If Lou Piniella had an issue with you, you knew. If Bob Huggins had a problem, you had a problem. That isn’t Baker’s way.

Maybe none of this matters. Next week in St. Louis, Dusty Baker could assume his lonely perch along the dugout rail, chew on a pick and feel as if all is right with the world. Some stress is actually a good thing. It forces us to take action.

It’s an unwelcome intrusion, though. And a gentle reminder that even in this most satisfying of summers, there are things more vital than ballgames.